Trump Yanks John Brennan’s Security Clearance

The former CIA director under Barack Obama, John Brennan had his security clearance revoked today by the White House. The Prsident’s full statement is available at FOX News. House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders read a statement to the press that included the following:

Brennan “has a history that calls his credibility into question.” …

… Brennan had been “leveraging” the clearance to make “wild outbursts” and claims against the Trump administration in the media.

“The president has a constitutional responsibility to protect classified information and who has access to it, and that’s what he’s doing is fulfilling that responsibility in this action.”

Others have been placed on a list for consideration to remove their security clearances: “…former FBI director James Comey; former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe; former director of national intelligence James Clapper; former national security adviser Susan Rice and former CIA director Michael Hayden.”

Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, former FBI agent Peter Strzok (who was fired from the bureau last week) and former FBI general counsel Lisa Page were added to the list on Wednesday.

21 Responses to Trump Yanks John Brennan’s Security Clearance

The really amazingly stupid thing is that after the Boston Globe called for it, media jumped on the announced bandwagon, and THEY WERE ALREADY DOING IT! (This witless crap has been going on long before Trump arrived on the scene.) Now it is “official” I guess.

Bless their pointy little heads. As if Americans did not trust and had a basic, well founded loathing of the fake news turds trying to manipulate us already. Give us more reason to despise these crass propagandists from NPR to NYT.

They continue to play right into his hands…like silly putty they bounce from wall to wall in chaotic glee thinking they’ve really got him now. Soooo professional.

But as we all know this has been going on for quite awhile…remember the Journolist?

Journolist: In June of 2010 the Daily Caller news website seized on the existence of a secret, private web message board open only to left-wing members of the news media, found its messages, and exposed them to the world. The message board was revealed to be openly plotting to make sure that negative coverage of Barack Obama was either explained away or, better yet, ignored by the media. This collusion showed that “the fix was in” and that liberal “journalists” saw no reason not to coordinate along ideological lines instead of simply reporting the truth.

U.S. President Barack Obama came into office pledging open government, but he has fallen short of his promise. Journalists and transparency advocates say the White House curbs routine disclosure of information and deploys its own media to evade scrutiny by the press. Aggressive prosecution of leakers of classified information and broad electronic surveillance programs deter government sources from speaking to journalists. …

In the Obama administration’s Washington, government officials are increasingly afraid to talk to the press. Those suspected of discussing with reporters anything that the government has classified as secret are subject to investigation, including lie-detector tests and scrutiny of their telephone and e-mail records. An “Insider Threat Program” being implemented in every government department requires all federal employees to help prevent unauthorized disclosures of information by monitoring the behavior of their colleagues.

Six government employees, plus two contractors including Edward Snowden, have been subjects of felony criminal prosecutions since 2009 under the 1917 Espionage Act, accused of leaking classified information to the press—compared with a total of three such prosecutions in all previous U.S. administrations. Still more criminal investigations into leaks are under way. Reporters’ phone logs and e-mails were secretly subpoenaed and seized by the Justice Department in two of the investigations, and a Fox News reporter was accused in an affidavit for one of those subpoenas of being “an aider, abettor and/or conspirator” of an indicted leak defendant, exposing him to possible prosecution for doing his job as a journalist. In another leak case, a New York Times reporter has been ordered to testify against a defendant or go to jail. ,,,

… journalists told me, designated administration spokesmen are often unresponsive or hostile to press inquiries, even when reporters have been sent to them by officials who won’t talk on their own. Despite President Barack Obama’s repeated promise that his administration would be the most open and transparent in American history, reporters and government transparency advocates said they are disappointed by its performance in improving access to the information they need.

“This is the most closed, control freak administration I’ve ever covered,” said David E. Sanger, veteran chief Washington correspondent of The New York Times.

The Obama administration has notably used social media, videos, and its own sophisticated websites to provide the public with administration-generated information about its activities, (Benghazi video) along with considerable government data useful for consumers and businesses. However, with some exceptions, such as putting the White House visitors’ logs on the whitehouse.gov website and selected declassified documents on the new U.S. Intelligence Community website, it discloses too little of the information most needed by the press and public to hold the administration accountable for its policies and actions. “Government should be transparent,” Obama stated on the White House website, as he has repeatedly in presidential directives. “Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their government is doing.”

But his administration’s actions have too often contradicted Obama’s stated intentions. “Instead,” New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan wrote earlier this year, “it’s turning out to be the administration of unprecedented secrecy and unprecedented attacks on a free press.”

That smile and easy going style hides a much more sinister core!

Maybe the press were just lousy at information gathering or too scared to even try.

Gotta give Sheryl Attkisson, Sarah Carter, Gregg Jarrett and many others a lot of credit for digging deep to bring us the scoop.

The IBD article says the number of papers participating had dropped from 100 to 70, at that time. Wonder how many more will wise up. Those that do decide to still participate should all get matching shovels to dig their professional graves.

Trump will once again come out the victor and the press will once again prove it for him.

“On his nationally syndicated radio show Tuesday, Conservative Review co-founder and Fox News host Mark Levin blasted news anchors’ attempts to paint themselves as defenders of the First Amendment just because they are part of the press. “You’re not defending anything,” he declared.

Levin slammed the media for giving unending airtime to critics of President Donald Trump and then wondering why the American people heckle their correspondents.

“So, in other words,” Levin said. “They give her the air time, the way they gave Comey the air time, and this Michael Wolff the air time, and the kook professor from Yale the air time… they give them all air time. The lawyer to Stormy Daniels, Stormy Dan, give them all tons and tons of air time, and then they pull back and they say, ‘Why are people attacking us? You’re attacking us. You’re attacking freedom of the press.'”

Levin then set the record straight about the real target of the right: Not the First Amendment, but the biased press.

“No, we’re attacking you idiots, you left-wing, ideologue slobs and hacks and thugs in the media. We’re not attacking the First Amendment. We’re attacking you!” he said.

“You don’t represent freedom of speech just because you have freedom of speech any more than some carnival barker on the corner does or some homeless guy standing on a box screaming at the top of his lungs,” Levin continued. “You don’t represent freedom of the press just because you’re in the press. You’re not defending anything. Nobody’s attacking the First Amendment. You undermine your own professionalism because you don’t have any.”

We aren’t attacking all of the FBI or justice or the CIA either…we are exposing the corrupt individuals within those organizations that have given those organizations a black eye and brought harm and shame to our nation! The lying press also need to get that!

Pick a topic…you’ll find them in that basket of deplorables…they accuse with a big fat indiscriminate brush.

It’s about damn time! Lied to Clowngress under oath and to the American people, promoted the Dodgy Dossier and assisted in the phony FISA warrants.

No real reason why security clearances should be continued once folks like Susan Rice, Sally Yates, Peter Strzok, Andrew McCabe, James Comey, Bruce Ohr, James Clapper are no longer in goofernment service.

Let us set aside Brennan illegal spying on the Senate (for which he should have been fired and prosecuted).

Let us set aside his running of a witch hunt of journalists for Obama.

Let us set aside the numerous questionable activities he was involved in with Obama such as drone bombing and “signature strikes” in Yemen which targeted people without even knowing who they are.

What I want to know is how did this former Communist Party USA member (well he denies ever being a member) who at least aligned himself with the Communist Party USA (a Cold War proxy of USSR) and voted for Stalinist Gus Hall for president ever get a security clearance in the first place?

I mean, really folks. A youthful indiscretion?

In any case, after watching him on various alphabet channels I am convinced this guy is unhinged. Every time he accuses the president of treason — without any evidence — he is abusing his oath of office, an oath that is supposed to follow you into retirement if you are CIA.

Obama should have fired Brennan just like he did Van Jones when it was disclosed he too was a member of the communist party. Everyone wants to know how he got approved by the Senate? Sounds like Brennan’s vetting was just as thorough as Obama’s.

Brennan’s lies along with so many more told by the Obama administration is in part why voters elected Trump.

”
As reports emerged Thursday that an internal investigation by the Central Intelligence Agency’s inspector general found that the CIA “improperly” spied on US Senate staffers when researching the CIA’s dark history of torture, it was hard to conclude anything but the obvious: John Brennan blatantly lied to the American public. Again.

“The facts will come out,” Brennan told NBC News in March after Senator Dianne Feinstein issued a blistering condemnation of the CIA on the Senate floor, accusing his agency of hacking into the computers used by her intelligence committee’s staffers. “Let me assure you the CIA was in no way spying on [the committee] or the Senate,” he said.

After the CIA inspector general’s report completely contradicted Brennan’s statements, it now appears Brennan was forced to privately apologize to intelligence committee chairs in a “tense” meeting earlier this week. Other Senators on Thursday pushed for Brennan to publicly apologize and called for an independent investigation. Sen. Ron Wyden said it well:
——
Ron Wyden
.@CIA broke into Senate computer files. Then tried to have Senate staff prosecuted. Absolutely unacceptable in a democracy.
——
But the director of the CIA – and the architect of America’s drone program, who will be all but defending torture for the next several weeks – should do more than that. Apologies aren’t enough: John Brennan should resign.”

My top of my head answer is the further we get from leadership by the WWII generation, that understood (viscerally) the critical need for tight security, and the more the boomer commies have infiltrated and taken command, the sloppier our security has become. Hard core hippy dippy commie types don’t care about security, they care about how they can use positions of power to secure the fundamental transformation of our republic.

The sloppy way the Benghazi attack was investigated is but one example.

The many serious, hard working people who work in this area of government service deserve better from their leadership…good riddance to the rotten scoundrels.

I supposed everyone knows by now that there is compelling evidence that, at the behest of President Obama, John Brennan instigated and pushed forward the fake dossier by colluding with Hillary Clinton and Harry Reid to manufacture a Trump-Russia collusion fraud.

Here are some salient points I have gleaned from various sources in the press and I wonder if I have missed anything. So please add to this list if you have something more to share. I really haven’t been following this very closely, presuming that the truth may finally out. The way Mueller seems to be is handling this, it may never. So today I decided to do some research.

1) Hillary Clinton paid for the fake dossier (well known fact by now, of course)

2) Harry Reid wrote a letter to James Comey accusing President Trump’s campaign of colluding with the Russian government after a lengthy conversation with John Brennan.

3) Obama and Brennan knew the dubious nature of the allegations against Trump (in the Steele dossier), but pushed them anyway.

3) The FBI under James Comey violated standard department procedures to fraudulently use the unverified dossier in order to procure a FISA warrant to spy on Trump campaign advisor Carter Page. In particular, The FISA court was not told that the Clinton campaign paid for the dossier.

4) Steele had not been in Russia for 20 years and his sources were unidentified Russians. (Now, isn’t that interesting. A FISA judge might find that important.)

5) The Comey’s FBI lied when they maintained that the Steele dossier was not extensively used to obtain the FISA warrant on Carter Page.

6) The political firm Fusion GPS began leaking about the dossier after conversations with John Brennan. They made numerous unverifiable allegations about a Trump connection to Russia and even went as far as to say the dossier got somebody “killed” in order to titillate eager “journalists.”

Conclusion thus far: Dirty politics genius Hillary Clinton with the help of the Obama-Brennan team and probable collusion with James Comey insinuated an unverified, and evidently phony dossier into the criminal justice system to create a bogus investigation which naturally evolved into the Mueller investigation. As the old saying goes, sewage flows down hill.

Have I missed anything?

Collusion isn’t a crime, but, to the best of my knowledge, defrauding a FISA court is. (Comey et. al.) Collusion isn’t a crime, but spying on the Senate and then lying about it is. (Brennan). It would seme there are a few deserved prosecutions that will never see the light of day.

As most here already know, I am not a big fan of Trump. But for all his obnoxious crassness and penchant for saying really stupid things, he is no where near as vile nor poisonous to the precepts of truth and justice as this nest of vipers.

Comey assembled his team of McCabe, Strzok and Orh in less than a year. He then assigned them the Hillary Email and Trump/Russian collusion cases at headquarters, instead of having agents in the field offices do the investigations and report their findings back to Comey. Comey had total control of both cases, under direction of his supervisors. No honest field agents were assigned to do an investigation in either case.

“So today I decided to do some research.” … but not to cite your sources, which you really should do. Some doofuss’s blog is not a credible source. And just by the way you put things … or paste things … we are inspired to doubt, and do some research of our own.

For instance: “1) Hillary Clinton paid for the fake dossier (well known fact by now, of course)”

But in September or October of 2015—[Glenn] Simpson was vague about the exact date—a client hired Fusion GPS to investigate Donald Trump. (The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative Web site that has received funding from the hedge-fund billionaire Paul Singer, has acknowledged hiring Fusion GPS to investigate candidates during the Republican Presidential primaries.) Simpson said the mandate was to carry out an “open-ended” examination of Trump’s business record, including his bankruptcies, and, he added, “it evolved somewhat quickly into issues of his relationship to organized-crime figures.”

One of the early subjects of the inquiry, Simpson said, was Felix Sater, a longtime business associate of Trump’s who reportedly was linked to the Russian mafia, and who played a role in the development of the Trump SoHo building. Another subject of interest was the financing of Trump’s various real-estate projects. “We saw indications that some of the money came from Kazakhstan, among other places, and that some of it you just couldn’t account for,” Simpson said. But, for the first six months of the work, he added, the probe wasn’t focussed only on Russia.

Things changed in the spring of 2016, after Fusion GPS got a new client, which we now know to have been the Clinton campaign and the D.N.C. (This fact emerged in October, well after Simpson’s testimony, when lawyers from the Judiciary Committee demanded Fusion GPS’s bank records.) In “May or June of 2016,” Simpson recalled, he engaged Christopher Steele, an old associate of his, who was the former head of the Russia desk at the British foreign-intelligence agency, MI6. He and Steele, who was by then running his own intelligence consultancy in the U.K., shared an interest in the Russian kleptocracy and in organized-crime issues, Simpson said.

“2) Harry Reid wrote a letter to James Comey accusing President Trump’s campaign of colluding with the Russian government after a lengthy conversation with John Brennan.”

Here, you have to tell me what is even fishy about this. The CIA and the Congress are allowed, even required to talk to each other. And the Congress is allowed to bring matters to the attention of the DOJ. You seem to object to the subject matter, but you’ll have to take that up with Trump.

“3) Obama and Brennan knew the dubious nature of the allegations against Trump (in the Steele dossier), but pushed them anyway.”

I don’t know what this is supposed to mean? Pushed? Obama very courteously and correctly made Trump aware of the situation after the election. Your objection to this escapes me.

“4) Steele had not been in Russia for 20 years and his sources were unidentified Russians. (Now, isn’t that interesting. A FISA judge might find that important.)

5) The Comey’s FBI lied when they maintained that the Steele dossier was not extensively used to obtain the FISA warrant on Carter Page.”

You’re contradicting yourself, dude. Either the FISA judge was “extensively” familiar with the dossier … or he wasn’t. Make up you mind. Furthermore, anybody who cares to can download the warrant and see for themselves that your sources are full of it.

“6) The political firm Fusion GPS began leaking about the dossier after conversations with John Brennan. They made numerous unverifiable allegations about a Trump connection to Russia and even went as far as to say the dossier got somebody “killed” in order to titillate eager “journalists.”

Buzzfeed published, not leaked, the dossier. They have yet to disclose their source … and you should not hold your breath. The rest of this is pure blog.

And for the hundred and twelfth time, firing an FBI director to stop an investigation into yourself … if it can be proved … is positively a crime. We shall just have to wait and see. The Donald’s lack of patience, discipline and common sense become daily more evident.

For instance. The Steele OR on Trump began with opponents in the primary. But it was dropped…unsubstaniated information.

The Hillary campaign and the DNC picked it up and ran with it…the way they saw it they and their press could make it seem to have substance. Smear campaigns based on lies was SOP with this band of criminals and since Hillary was a shoe-in…who would ever know any different?

The FBI, the Clinton campaign and the DNC all helped fund the dossier…conspiracy…you betcha!

I don’t understand why Brennan, Clapper, or anyone should have a security clearance after their time is up. It should not be a matter of Trump punishing critics. Once you leave your job, you should lose your clearance. I worked at three highly-secure government jobs. When I left, I did not keep my security clearance, nor did I keep my building access card, my gun, my badge, my files. or anything else. There was no dispute. It was just routine, whether you quit, retired, were fired, died, whatever.